I Was Too Busy to Remember My Own Life
Learning to Reclaim Your Life by Slowing Down and Being Present
For years, I tried to outrun time. I filled every hour with tasks, every day with responsibilities, every week with so much motion that I barely had space to breathe, let alone reflect. I told myself that if I stayed busy enough—productive enough—maybe I wouldn’t notice how quickly life was passing. Maybe I could avoid the fear of forgetting.
But all that relentless doing created exactly what I feared most: a life I couldn’t fully remember. The days blurred, the weeks dissolved, and the memories slipped away because I wasn’t present for any of them. I was everywhere and nowhere at once—hyper-focused on the next item on my list, but completely disconnected from my own life.
The Discomfort of Stillness
Stillness felt threatening. Rest felt like wasted time. Slowing down made me feel guilty, as if pausing for even a moment meant I was falling behind. When I wasn’t producing or checking off tasks, a heavy shame crept in. Who was I to stop when there was so much left undone?
But beneath that guilt lived something deeper: fear. If I stopped moving, I would have to confront how much time had already slipped through my fingers—and how much of my life I had missed while I was busy being busy.
Meeting Myself Again Through Scrapbooking
The thing that shifted everything was something I once dismissed as too trivial, too quiet, too slow: scrapbooking.
It started with one page. One memory I didn’t want to lose. Three hours later, when I finally looked up from my desk, I realized something had changed. Those hours weren’t wasted—they were reclaimed. They were hours I had taken back from the blur.
Scrapbooking forced me to sit with a moment long enough to feel it again. I didn’t just glance at a photo and tuck it away. I remembered the temperature of that day, the conversation that happened just before the shutter clicked, the emotion in my chest when the moment occurred. I matched colors to the mood, wrote down details I might otherwise forget, rearranged elements until the page felt honest.
Each page takes me about three hours—and those three hours anchor me. They slow me down. They let me savor rather than rush. They soften the fear of forgetting because they remind me I was truly there.
The Paradox of Slowing Down
What surprised me most was that slowing down didn’t make me lose more time—it helped me remember more of it. The memories became richer and more textured. They stopped slipping through the cracks of an overscheduled life.
The creative process itself became grounding. Choosing patterns, assembling layouts, writing captions—all of it was a practice in presence. Each page became proof that my life wasn’t just a long list of achievements, but a collection of moments that deserved to be felt and remembered.
Journaling soon became part of the ritual. Together, the two practices quieted the anxiety that had kept me running for so long. Instead of trying to escape time, I learned to inhabit it. Instead of packing every hour to avoid feeling it pass, I created space to honor it.
What Changed
Everything.
The constant hum of anxiety faded. The sense of time slipping away eased. I slept better. I felt more grounded. For the first time in years, I could recall last week, last month, last year without needing to consult my calendar.
And the biggest surprise? I didn’t become less productive—I became more so. Rest sharpened me. Creativity revived me. Slowing down improved the quality of my work in ways constant motion never could.
But the most important change was internal:
I met myself again.
The version of me who could sit without guilt.
Who could be present without planning the next move.
Who understood that a meaningful life isn’t measured by how much we accomplish, but by how deeply we experience the moments we’re given.
The Permission I Needed
If you see yourself in this—if you’re exhausted from running yet terrified to stop—I want to offer you the permission I spent years searching for:
Slowing down isn’t failing.
Slowing down isn’t weakness.
Slowing down is coming home to yourself.
You don’t have to scrapbook. But you do need something that gives you your three hours—your way of reclaiming time instead of losing it.
Because time will pass no matter what we do. The only question is whether we’re present enough to feel it, remember it, and let it matter.
Slowing down didn’t take time from me.
It gave me my life back.
